ASEAN summit
Southeast Asian leaders gathered for their annual summit on Saturday, aiming to enact plans to create a single EU-style community in the years ahead, while dealing with a deepening global economic crisis. The 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations has started on the road towards becoming a single community embracing 570 million people with a combined GDP of $2 trillion in six years, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said. "ASEAN will continue to be centrally located between growing poles of growth and power in the Asia-Pacific region, with Northeast Asia on one side and South Asia on the other. The challenge is how we can maintain ASEAN centrality in the evolving regional architecture," Abhisit said in an opening address.
But while the leaders look at their roadmap towards a future community, they are also seeking coordinated responses to the global economic crisis that raises the spectre of rising unemployment in the mostly impoverished region whose economies rely heavily on exports.Some of them face elections this year or next. Host Thailand, which has had four prime ministers over the past year, offers some sobering lessons when political rifts are not healed.This summit, scheduled for December in Bangkok, was postponed and moved to the royal seaside resort of Hua Hin due to street protests that included the seizure of Bangkok's main airports.


